sions, however, point to the importance of greater historical researchinto Florence Bailey and women similar to her. Now that Florence's lifeas an ornithologist has been told, her life as a woman should also berecorded.Purdue University GRACE MARY GOUVEIAThe Colonel's Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alzce KirkGrzerson. Edited and with an introduction by Shirley Anne Leckie.(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Pp. xiii+255. Pref-ace, introduction, illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography, in-dex. $25.95, cloth; $9.95, paper.)A number of wives of army officers on the western frontier pub-lished books about their experiences-Elizabeth Custer, Margaret andFrances Carrington, Martha Summerhayes, and dozens of others. Un-like these women, Alice Kirk Grierson did not produce a book, but dur-ing more than twenty years with her husband at posts mainly in IndianTerritory, Texas, and New Mexico she wrote and received numerousletters that fortunately were preserved.Shirley Leckie has arranged this correspondence with connectingtexts so that the result is a virtual narrative, aptly titled The Colonel'sLady on the Western Frontzer. Because Alice Grierson was not writing forpublication, her story is more candid than most accounts of militaryfamily life during that period.Alice was the wife of Col. Benjamin H. Grierson, hero of a famouscavalry raid across Mississippi in conjunction with General Grant's as-sault upon Vicksburg. In 1984, Shirley and William Leckie published ahistory of the Grierson family, and she follows the western trail set bythat book.The Colonel's Lady begins in 1866 with a letter from Alice in Illinois toher husband in Washington, D.C., where he was preparing to enter thepostwar regular army. From there she is precipitated into unfamiliarenvironments in a rapid succession of army post assignments. Eachtime that she believed she might be settled with some permanence, herhusband's Tenth Cavalry (black enlisted men with white officers) wouldbe transferred farther into the Southwest.The longest stay was at Fort Concho, Texas, for seven years. At firstthe Griersons hated the bleakness of the Plains and the wild town ofSan Angelo, but gradually they came to like the sweep of land and sky.In fact they did not look forward to the next move to Fort Davis, butsoon grew so fond of that scenic area they bought land for a ranch andplanned to retire there, though that never happened.

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